Lonar Crater

Trip: Aurangabad > Ajanta > Lonar > Daulatabad > Ellora

Imagine a mile wide and 150m deep pit. Worth watching? Naah. Now add the fact that a meteor created it some 60,000 yrs ago. Geeks would be interested. What if I tell you that this is the third largest impact crater in the world and right in the middle of our backyard? I hope you will go have a look.

Lonar Crater, Lonar

We started lazily for Lonar from our comfy hotel room at Ambassador Ajanta. It is 100 miles from Auragnabad. A car hired at 2100/- took us smoothly to the crater location within couple of hours thanks to smooth Maharashtra roads.

Crater and me, Lonar

The first glimpse of crater is actually most of what you will enjoy here. However this one glimpe is worth a world tour. The area around is pretty barren with an MTDC resort nearby and few ancient temple complexes. We decided not to trek down to the bottom of crater but instead chose a teample half mile from the resort to explore. It is known around as Surya Temple and boasts of a small waterfall.

Surya Temple, Lonar

A set of newly constructed stone staircase took us down to another very ancient looking temple which had a shivalinga. Although this temple was small, the importance given to it was clear. It was sitting almost adjacent to the base of crater.

Ancient Shiva Temple, Lonar

We enjoyed the cool breeze of a sunny day before returning back to the top. There was not much around left for us except to have a lunch at MTDC. We did that and were back to hotel by 6.